(TC) Technical

6.2. Legislation & regulation 6.2.1. Exposure limits Permissible Exposure limits (PEL) or Occupational Exposure Limits (OEL) are the legal limits for exposure of an employee to a chemical substance or physical agent. The exposure limits for employees are usually given as Time Weighted Average (TWA) values. The TWA is the average exposure over a specified…

Safe processing has a close relation with the health of workers in the textile cleaning industry and the neighbouring people living in close proximity of textile cleaning premises. Health effects are related to exposure to substances like chemicals, heat, or mechanical impact. Not the exposure itself is a problem but the amount, impact, or concentration…

Tetrachloroethylene equipment Tetrachloroethylene or PERC is one of the oldest and most used dry cleaning solvents still used nowadays. From the 1950s, PERC cleaning was carried out in transfer machines. The cleaning and the drying of the garment was separated, and the wet garment had to be transferred from the cleaning equipment to the drying…

The choice of a cleaning method is dependent on many aspects. Historical choices, an installed base of equipment, and familiarity with a certain cleaning method are of great importance when choosing a particular solvent. In the past, only a few cleaning methods were available, resulting in a limited choice. The availability of a solvent determined…

Solvents are used to clean sensitive garments that may not or should not be cleaned in regular cleaning processes. Delicate fibres, such as wool, silk or combined fabrics, might incur damage when cleaned in regular laundry processes. People in ancient times had already developed other cleaning methods to clean delicate garments. Nowadays several solvents are…

The dry cleaning process is the process with which sensitive textiles are cleaned in solvents, contrary to laundering with water. The variety of available solvents that are used in the dry cleaning process will be discussed in chapter 4.3. In this chapter, the dry cleaning process itself is addressed. The goal of the dry cleaning…

During the Roman Empire the highly developed trade of “fullers”, professional cleaners of garments, was known. Lye and ammonia were used in early laundering. It was combined with a type of clay known as fuller’s earth, used to absorb soils and grease from garments too delicate for laundering. There are many stories about the origin…